DENIAL OF VIOLENCE:

Fatma Müge Göçek seeks to decipher the roots of Turkish disavowal of the Armenian genocide. She argues that denial is a multi-layered, historical process with four distinct yet overlapping components: the structural elements of collective violence and situated modernity on one side, and the emotional elements of collective emotions and legitimating events on the other. In the Turkish case, denial emerged through four stages: (i) the initial imperial denial of the origins of the collective violence committed against the Armenians which began in 1789; (ii) the Young Turk denial of the act of violence that lasted from 1908 to 1918; (iii) early republican denial of the actors of violence took place from 1919 to 1973; and (iv) the late republican denial of the responsibility for the collective violence that continues today.